Pushing their problems down to the user in this way feels shitty, at best.
You've identified exactly what is going on.
Platforms such as this are facing a brutal, relentless scam/spam onslaught and I think we can conclude that no, in fact, they do not have an elegant solution to it.
The closest things I have seen to real, elegant solutions to this problem are:
1) metafilter charging $5 per new registration - I think you can send them a five dollar bill
2) lobste.rs with their chained/linked account referral which puts the cost on the referrer and introduces some personal responsibility for new signups, etc.
The common solution is to demand a SIM identity - any SIM identity - "for your protection". That's the best solution they have come up with - any functioning truly mobile number (backed by a SIM card, not VOIP) is enough sand in the gears to slow down the onslaught ...
Same people that complain in this post about over-jealous verification, will complain in another post about misinformation and propaganda.
If they cannot adequately protect against these scenarios they really should not be trying to collect and monetize so much granular user data. Clearly the organization is incapable of operating what they have built.
The reality, IMO, is that it is just not financially worthwhile for them to give a shit. People will jump through hoops for stupid validation purposes because they want access. Why spend engineering time solving a problem that is more easily handled by inconveniencing your users.
A bit tangential but actually I suspect those are nearly disjoint sets. In my experience the people who complain about misinformation and propaganda are okay with identity verification and censorship while those that want privacy (such as myself) typically dislike censorship and don't want a central authority getting involved to judge whether something is misinformation.
It largely comes down to trust in authority and centralized versus decentralized system design.